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Director Ian Rickson is starting from scratch for his new production of Mojo (Picture: Simon Annand)

The 1990s was the decade of Cool Britannia.

Blur and Oasis battling it out in the charts; the Young British Artists, with their dead animals, blood sculptures and sexual provocations in the galleries; and in theatres, a dazzling renaissance of new writing that was fearless,
visceral and unpredictable.

It was a period that, for all the dross at its fag end, at its best was characterised by extraordinary cultural confidence and swagger. The confrontational plays that emerged – many from the Royal Court – earned the collective label In-Yer-Face drama. And among the forerunners was 1995’s Mojo, the debut work by Jez Butterworth, who would go on to write the ribald, bewitching hit Jerusalem.

Eighteen years later, Ian Rickson, who directed the original production, is again squaring up to Mojo’s two-fisted, fast-talking mix of 1950s Soho seediness, violence and machismo, with a cast featuring Ben Whishaw, Daniel Mays and Rupert ‘Harry Potter’ Grint.

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The action, set in a nightclub, revolves around gang rivalries and involves the kidnapping of swivel-hipped rock’n’roller Silver Johnny, and the grisly murder of a low-rent kingpin. Butterworth’s boys, a kind of dysfunctional family, fight for survival and top-dog status.

With London gangsters on the big screen in the Brit flicks of the time, not to mention the slick wit of Tarantino’s hard-boiled crims, Mojo fed an eager public appetite when it premiered. So why revive it now?

‘It’s a modern classic,’ Rickson says. ‘It’s a very devious play, because it’s ticklish and seductive on the surface, and disturbing and challenging underneath. I think it’s far more mythic than I had the ability to intuit when I was 31, when I directed it before. It’s about belonging, identity, gender, sacrifice and a legacy of abuse.’

Mojo opened at the Royal Court, proving so popular it was revived a year later at the New Ambassadors. But if punters were lapping up Butterworth’s heady cocktail of booze, pills, testosterone and tarnished glamour, critics were less convinced. The play, some said, lacked a moral centre. Then there’s the question of sexual politics: how tethered is Mojo to a decade that spawned Loaded and its imitators?

‘I abhor the lad culture of porny, blokey responses to the idea of equality that arrived after the 1980s,’ says Rickson. ‘But look at Mojo – it’s fraught with emasculated, fearful yearnings and it shows how an entirely patriarchal male tribe with an absence of the feminine will end up eating itself. It’s the complete opposite of the kind of Guy Ritchie, cocky, faux-gangster thing.’

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In directing the piece, Rickson says he has felt ‘honour-bound’ to forget how he last approached it, despite working again with composer Stephen Warbeck and designer Ultz. One team member who’s not on board is Rufus Norris, then Rickson’s assistant director and now artistic director designate of the National Theatre.

‘How about that?’ laughs Rickson delightedly. Did he apply for the job? ‘I didn’t. It’s such a demanding job – and I’m really enjoying being freelance.’ Rickson knows about demanding jobs: he was artistic director of the Royal Court from 1998 to 2006. It was incredible but while you’re doing it, you’re not very human,’ he says.

He and Butterworth have been loyal friends and collaborators since Mojo and Rickson has directed all Butterworth’s plays. He has also worked with a constellation of stars – all of whom the director, a fervent believer in research, has put through rigorous preparation.

For Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, he dispatched Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss to a boarding school to teach; for his mental institution-set Hamlet, he and Michael Sheen visited hospitals and consulted psychiatric professionals.

The Mojo process sounds much more fun; so far, it has featured a night in Soho drinking den The French House, listening to the reminiscences of former 1950s club owners and jazz musicians.

‘Oh, it’s brilliant,’ Rickson agrees. ‘It feels a bit like I’m working with Jez on remastering his first album. Great. How lucky am I?’